Earlier today major corporations in both Russia and Ukraine reported a massive cyber attack trying or succeeding in crippling their services. While the flare up of a ‘cyber war’ between the two countries seemed the most logical option to many at first, now it seems it could be just another group of hackers looking for bitcoin ransom.

The Moscow-based global cyber security company, Group-IB‏, just shared a screenshot of a message of the ransomware affecting the computer systems it calls the Petya Virus. The message from the hackers demands just $300 to be paid in bitcoin in order to recover the files.

This story is developing at the moment and involves a highly controversial topic, therefore it is expect that some will doubt this is really a ransomware attack by cyber criminals and not a state actor trying to cover its tracks by pretending to be interested in bitcoin.

Among the systems known to be affected by the massive cyber attack on both sides today are Ukrainian banks, and energy infrastructure as well as the Russian oil giant Rosneft – The world’s largest publicly traded petroleum company and the largest Russian taxpayer.

Hackers demanding bitcoin is one of the leading use cases for the cryptocurrency in recent times. Like we reported last year, even American authorities are not safe from hackers and forced to pay in bitcoin like common victims
.